The Nile Development Game: Tug-of-War or Benefits for All?

303 Pages·2019·9.045 MB·English

by  Mina Michel Samaan

Mina Michel Samaan
The Nile
Development
Game
Tug-of-War or Benefi ts for All?
The Nile Development Game
Mina Michel Samaan
The Nile Development Game
Tug-of-War or Benefits for All?
Carl-Friedrich-Gauß-Faculty
Technical University of Braunschweig
(der Technischen Universität Carolo-Wilhelmina
zu Braunschweig)
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Political Science (Dr. rer. pol.)
(zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der
Staatswissenschaften (Dr. rer. pol.)
vorgelegte Dissertation)
Submission date: 15.02.2017
Disputation date: 23.08.2017
Referee 1: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Menzel
Referee 2: Prof. Dr. Anja P. Jakobi
Mina Michel Samaan
Braunschweig University of Technology
Braunschweig, Niedersachsen, Germany
ISBN 978-3-030-02664-6 ISBN 978-3-030-02665-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02665-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018961430
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Endorsements
In this book, Dr. Mina Samaan examines the development of the Nile cooperation
over several decades, presenting the interaction and interdependency of cross-
border water supply and potential lines for conflict. Water, despite being central to
all countries, is not equally shared and the importance of this book is the detailed
analysis on how riparian states shift their share, responsibilities, and burdens over
time. Readers of this book will find a dense description of current and past water
policies along the Nile, presented by Dr. Mina Samaan as an author with a regional
and interdisciplinary expertise.
– Prof. Dr. Anja P. Jakobi, Professor of International Relations,
TU-Braunschweig
Everyone immediately understands that cooperation is essential, especially in areas
vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and where water is already scarce.
Political and armed conflicts are definitely no solutions. Moreover, they further
exacerbate the problem in unnecessary ways. We all know that international policies
and relations are not easy going matters. What really counts at the end of the day is
the willingness and serious, concrete intention to find and implement effective
solutions. Here, peaceful cooperation is essential, otherwise there will be no
winners, only losers.
Talking about losers would also means talking about ecosystems. Uncontrolled
overexploitation of transboundary lakes, rivers, and aquifers can jeopardize
ecosystem services and have dire consequences for the reliability and sustainability
of water supplies, which could additionally contribute to international tension, if
those impacts are felt more keenly on the other side of a border.
The Excellence Center on Sustainable Water Management in Developing
Countries (EXCEED-SWINDON) at the Technical University of Braunschweig has
been working since 2009 on various fields related to water. The EXCEED-
SWINDON consists of a network of 30 full member institutions worldwide, each of
which is represented by a renowned scientist whose research focuses on water
problems.
v
vi Endorsements
This book is the research product of the EXCEED-SWINDON PhD three-year
scholarship, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which
was awarded to Mina Michel Samaan based on the decision of an international
committee of water experts from ten universities out of five different countries.
Being the scientific coordinator of the EXCEED-SWINDON, I got to know Mina
during his doctoral study and gained an impressive insight into his target-oriented,
structured, and thorough research work.
The book mainly highlights the consequences of missing basin-wide cooperation
and the formation of partial coalitions, one against another, while taking the example
of the “River Nile Problem” into account. The reader gets an in-depth understanding
of complex interactions between the Nile riparian countries in planning and
implementing their large-scale developmental schemes.
However, one should bear in mind that it is never too late for making a real
concerted effort to identify and to implement trustful common grounds. While this
might already be a small step forward for all parties involved, it would definitely
mean a big step forward for those relying on water every day.
– Prof. Dr. Andreas Haarstrick, Professor of Bioprocess Engineering,
TU-Braunschweig
Foreword
One important question in the context of climate change is how to deal with the 276
transboundary river basins worldwide. These basins cover nearly half of the earth
with around one-third of its population. Obviously, there are examples of trans-
boundary river basins where problems of cooperation among riparian states have
been solved, such as the Rhine and Danube. However, there are other constellations
where intense and almost irresolvable conflicts have arisen, such as the Jordan and
Aral lake basins. This type of constellation is particularly the case in arid or semi-
arid regions as in the Near and Middle East, where there is limited rainfall, while
artificial irrigation from surface water is the basis for life. The popular slogan of the
“coming water wars” emerged in the context of transboundary river basins shared
among numerous riparian states using the waters and the fertile sediments trans-
ported by the river for different purposes such as drinking, irrigation, fishing, hydro-
power generation, cooling of power plants, navigation, and sewage disposal. In
addition, a difficult problem to resolve in theory as well as in practice is saving
losses due to evapotranspiration and underground drainage. Only hydraulic engi-
neering is thought to solve these problems and meet those intricate needs.
Nevertheless, it requires advanced technology and special expertise to harness
nature and provide sufficient water, energy, and food supplies with minimum social
and environmental costs.
The Nile, the largest river in the world, not in terms of runoffs as the Amazon, but
in terms of length, is a prominent example for the constellation described, because
11 countries of completely different climate zones belong to its basin. While the
upstream riparians on the Blue Nile (e.g., Ethiopia) or the White Nile (e.g., Uganda)
have enough water, because they rely on the tropics on rainfed not irrigated agricul-
ture and they have several lakes and rivers besides the Nile, the downstream ripari-
ans Egypt and Sudan are almost completely dependent on the Nile. Every
intervention at the upper reaches of the Nile (e.g., building hydropower dams and
water regulators), any water withdrawal for irrigation or other purposes, or even the
disposal of wastewater affects both the quantity (permanently or seasonally) and
quality of water in the downstream countries. Moreover, the speed by which a
vii
viii Foreword
reservoir is filled after a dam is completed entails serious consequences with respect
to the amount of runoffs. The water situation for Egypt is further fragile in an
extreme way, because unlike other rivers, the Nile by reaching the Sahara is no lon-
ger fed by rains or tributaries, whereas it loses water by evaporation in an enormous
amount, which is clear in the Nasser Lake behind the Aswan High Dam crossing the
border to Sudan.
The weak position of Egypt in geopolitical terms is compensated by the fact that
the country is the most powerful in the basin, possessing an air force capable of
destroying a dam before its completion by an air raid; at least Egypt can threaten to
do so. Further, it can raise historical claims about the water, which is a relevant
aspect in international water law, and has a long-established tradition and extensive
expertise in water management since ancient times, while the upstream riparians did
not have the same hydraulic civilization nor used the Nile water for such a long time
as Egypt did.
The author of the study was at the beginning of his research confronted with the
following situation: Egypt and Sudan, more or less completely dependent on the
Nile water in many respects, are no more able to feed their growing populations by
the existing cultivated land in the valley and delta of the Nile. All projects to reclaim
new land in the desert by artificial irrigation need additional water, which has to
come not only from nonrenewable aquifers but also from the Nile. However, drain-
ing off more water is threatened by projects of the upstream countries, in construct-
ing hydropower dams and irrigation schemes to produce sufficient energy and food
for domestic as well as export purposes. So a tug-of-war situation comes into exis-
tence, in which Egypt is not only lacking the additional water for new irrigation
projects but having permanently or at least for few years less water available until
the reservoirs behind the new dams are filled. The alternative would be to look for
a benefits-for-all approach, whereby the downstream riparians participate in energy
and food production with upstream riparians, taking into consideration interna-
tional division of labor and other forms of compensation for the loss of water avail-
able for them.
Actually, Egypt and Ethiopia are the main rivals in the basin because more than
80% of the water arriving in Egypt is delivered by the Blue Nile and other tributaries
originating in the Ethiopian Highlands. Since 2011, Ethiopia has launched the con-
struction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a huge national project
that aims to produce water power necessary for its industrialization. The dam’s
supplementary schemes are implemented with international support, especially by
the World Bank and China. For instance, the Chinese investments in Ethiopia
involve high-voltage transmission lines to the national grid and the neighboring
countries, in addition to industrial parks and a railway connecting Addis Ababa with
Djibouti. This may be understandable given the fact that China is the top export
destination and import origin for Ethiopia and that the top exports are agricultural
products. Thus, insofar as Ethiopia is backed internationally, it can withstand
Egypt’s political or even military pressure in case of substantial reduction of the
Nile runoff during the filling period of the reservoir behind the GERD after its
Foreword ix
completion in the near future. Egypt’s situation has worsened after Sudan has shifted
its position, despite their historical coalition as downstream countries, supporting
the GERD for its enormous benefits in terms of inexpensive electricity and water
regulation, urgently needed to cope with the loss of its former oilfields after the
independence of South Sudan. The attempts to resolve water-related conflicts coop-
eratively through the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), operating since 1999, have failed,
notably after the individual signature of the Cooperative Framework Agreement
(CFA) by most of the upstream countries in 2010 and the consequent decision of
Egypt and Sudan to suspend their participation in the NBI activities. The failure of
multilateralism has led the Nile riparian states to undertake unilateral actions,
searching for external partners to provide the required financial and technical assis-
tance, such as the World Bank, China, and the Gulf States.
The problem sketched above has constituted the research question of this study
about the variables influencing the strategies adopted by the riparian countries and
the resulted outcomes: sole utilization of the water by one riparian or a group of
riparians, cooperation among different riparians based on common interests, and
contention due to unilateral actions regardless of adverse impacts on the others.
By analyzing the four rounds of the “Nile Game” (colonial round, 1880s–1940s;
Cold War round, 1950s–1980s; post-Cold War round, 1990s–2000s; and post-
2011 round), the author showed that the game context, not only at the domestic
and regional levels but even at the global one, is the major driver for the way in
which the riparian countries act upon their shared water resources. Thus, the study
arrived at the conclusion that in each round of the game equilibrium came into
existence, which was determined by the changing political and environmental
contexts. Examples of this are the rivalry between the colonial powers Great
Britain and France in controlling the whole basin, the East–West Conflict under
which Egypt and Ethiopia were supported by the Soviet Union and the USA alter-
natively, the decolonization and establishment of independent states in the basin,
the Near East Wars including the Arab-Israeli and the Ethiopian-Eritrean con-
flicts, the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new actors in financing proj-
ects, and currently the engagement of China in Africa in light of its Silk Road
Initiative. Equilibrium also has been significantly influenced by every revolution,
military takeover, and period of decentralization, in addition to extreme events of
floods and droughts in every round. These changing contextual variables have
been responsible for the current status of equilibrium in which the riparian states
are not following the multilateral or neo-institutionalist approach favored by the
author (benefits for all), but adopting the unilateral or neo-realist approach (tug-
of-war). Such findings contribute to rethinking the role of institutions at the dif-
ferent levels in creating adequate context for the Nile riparian states to shift from
unilateralism to multilateralism for the sake of present and future generations of
the basin.
“Prof. Dr. Ulrich Menzel” who is the main supervisor of the study and the former
acting director of the Institute of Social Sciences at TU-Braunschweig, Germany
Acknowledgment
At the outset, I would like to express my grateful thanks to my main supervisor and
to the project that funded this doctoral study. In March 2012, I participated in a
workshop at Mansoura University, Egypt, organized by the Excellence Center for
Sustainable Water Management in Developing Countries (EXCEED), which is
sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and headquartered
at TU-Braunschweig, Germany. Following my presentation, which focused on
national development plans and challenges of water scarcity in Egypt, Prof. Dr.
Ulrich Menzel, the then acting director of the Institute of Social Sciences (ISW) at
TU-Braunschweig, commented that the problem has a further dimension and that it
originates from outside, not inside, Egypt, inspiring me to study the development
plans in the entire Nile Basin. I applied thereafter for the EXCEED PhD scholarship
funded by the DAAD. A committee of international experts selected my proposal
and Prof. Dr. Menzel accepted to supervise my doctoral thesis. In German, the main
supervisor is called “Doktorvater,” literally “the father of the doctorate,” which was
what I experienced with Prof. Dr. Menzel in every sense of the word. Since the first
day of my scholarship in November 2013, he has made an enormous effort and has
given me much of his valuable time to put me on the right track and push me for-
ward along the way. In addition, the support of EXCEED to my work exceeded the
limits of the scholarship. Professor Dr. Andreas Haarstrick, the project’s scientific
coordinator, has provided me with his complete support in all my steps before, dur-
ing, and after the scholarship period. The EXCEED board, namely Prof. Dr. Mufit
Bahadir, Prof. Dr. Norbert Dichtl, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Menzel, and Prof. Dr. Andreas
Haarstrick, decided to purchase a specialized screen reader software for visually
impaired persons so as to enable me to do my duty efficiently, which was initiated
by Mr. Mathias Marx, the then ISW librarian. In this respect, I cannot forget the
continuous support of Prof. Dr. Zeinab Aboul-Naga and Prof. Dr. Mufeed Batarseh,
who invited me to the Mansoura University workshop, introduced me to the pro-
gram, and ensured the success of the research.
I would like also to express my deep appreciation to my second supervisor, Prof.
Dr. Anja Jakobi, the head of the International Relations Chair at TU-Braunschweig,
for her massive support and constructive insights. In addition to the supervisors and
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